VA - Ice Mustard [mt010]

Musictrade opens year 2007 with this ambient compilation featuring a full house of Musictrade artists. As one would expect from Musictrade, there is a strong edge of experimental in this compilation, with elements of classical drone ambient combining to innovative use of field recordings and found sound material.

Electroteque's [Australia] Collective Consciousness is, as the title suggests, a musical insight into various voices and ideas present in today's collective consciousness, bound together in relaxed and stylish fashion charasteristic to this Sydney based artist. 'Birds' by Doc [Finland] and Frags [Sweden] is an ambient adventure into the strangely musical world of birds, based on Doc's countryside field recordings from summer 2006 and Frags's ambient groove. Frags also contributes another track 'Eleventh of Eleventh', a calm and soothing meditative piece to relax in. Softspace [England] takes us to his fantastic visual soundworlds with two tracks. Moon's Halo is reminiscent of floating ice crystals in the upper atmosphere while Hollow Lands brings to mind sci-fi like scenes of Earth in a distant future. KraftiM [Holland] also contributes two tracks: Awl I Can Say is an introspective dive into the depths of a single sung vocal, and Danik builds on KraftiM's daughter's humming combined to cool wave material provided by Electroteque. The album closes with cinematic and capturing 'Helsinki' by Unknown Forces [Scotland], based on his field recordings from a recent concert trip to Helsinki.

Note: 24bit/88.2kHz audiophile version of this album is available on BitTorrent.